Poison Fruit

Poison Fruit is an electric, groove-based collage of Brazilian vibes. As an unorthodox take on Brazilian music, this album could be popular with house fans as well as Brazilian music aficionados open to electronic sounds. Poison Fruit feels like a through-composed exploration rather than a collection of separate compositions.

This makes perfect sense when you know how the album was put together. Mamão and his son Thiago Maranhão (percussionist for Azymuth) recorded several extended jam sessions over the course of a few years, and these have been reimagined for the album by producer Daniel Maunick. Mamão says, ‘The idea was to make songs that would work well for DJs.’

This intention is clearly audible, and you can hear the space left in tracks for mixing. The notion of constructing music in a way that means it can be successfully re-performed by a DJ is a relevant concept worth taking note of (on-demand radio is the new ‘in thing’, and this album would sit perfectly in a late-night Worldwide FM set). For a mag about global house or worldbeat this would be a solid five stars, but for Songlines it's a solid three.